


Do Lesbians Dream of Eclectic Sleep?

by JustinianAugustus



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: Coming of Age, F/F, Fluff and Angst, LGBTQ Themes, Pseudo-Canon-Compliant, Some unspecified time during BtS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-12
Updated: 2017-09-12
Packaged: 2018-12-26 20:12:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12066150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustinianAugustus/pseuds/JustinianAugustus
Summary: A romantic encounter had been the last thing she was expecting out of a DnD date...





	Do Lesbians Dream of Eclectic Sleep?

Chloe wasn’t quite sure why she accepted the invitation.  
Perhaps it was a bit of self-pointed theatre, keeping up the veneer of sociability after Rachel dragged her kicking out of that malaise called _‘friendless loserdom’_.  
Perhaps, in a sense, it was preparation for further excursions with Rachel, like a training exercise. She didn’t want to seem any more desperate to Rachel than she already did in their strange hooky odyssey the other day, and hanging out with a couple Blackwell nerds was a low-stakes way to flex her social muscles.  
Perhaps she just wanted to finally meet Steph’s dad, and get the chance to check out whatever Star Trek type tech he used for his video editing.  
Whatever the reason was, the cynic in her didn’t think it was based on any actual affinity for Mikey and Steph or their game.

For all Chloe knew, Steph’s reason for inviting her was equally Machiavellian… maybe Steph just wanted to survey some inroads to Rachel Amber. She didn’t get a reputation as queen geek without a little bit of realpolitik.

When it came time to play, Chloe couldn’t help but phone things in — there were no outbursts to match her sadistic defeat of the dragon-kin when they first played on the Blackwell lawn. If Steph and Mikey noticed, however, they made no sign of it; and more than anything seemed grateful for a fresh face around the table.

Not that Chloe’s face took any focus in the room – the lights, fixed on an inert ceiling fan, were dimmed to the point of flickering, and the last shafts of spring sunlight having disappeared behind a promontory hours before, their playspace took on the character of a Noir poker lounge. The crimson wallpaper waxed nearly black, and only a small circle of illumination penetrated the mahogany dining table around which they gathered. Behind the game board, all Chloe could see of Steph was her face, candled with a grin and floating disembodied in the room’s dark extremities like the Ghost of Lesbian Future.

Reaching through empty soda cans, Chloe tried once more to attack the Kobolds that had beset their party in an abandoned mineshaft. Steph had just begun to narrate the duel when a rapid succession of creaking floorboards interrupted her and another figure emerged from the darkness beside Chloe. She could make out a man with combed-back hair, marbled with grey, and clad in faded argyle hotel slippers punctuating slate sweatpants with a matching polo undershirt — Steph’s father. His haphazard ensemble suggested he just left his bed.

“Listen, guys, I know you’re doing a game right now, but it’s almost three AM. I can hear you talking from upstairs and I’m afraid you’re just going to play on through morning unless I stop you. You can always resume tomorrow.”

Mr. Gingrich had visible half-moons of fatigue under his eyes, and his skin betrayed a periphery of wrinkles, albeit less severe than the pundit with which he shared a name. Taking particular notice of Chloe, he continued:

“Hey, I promise I’m not a hardass. Just don’t want you kids to totally screw up your sleep schedule.”

Chloe produced some noise of acknowledgement, but briefly made eye contact with Steph to gauge her reaction. She gave Chloe a little beam of amusement before her own deference to the request, and quickly stalled the game for a hiatus. Her father had already started heading upstairs when Mikey turned up the dimmer to facilitate their perfunctory sweep of cans and wrappers off the table, stinging Chloe’s eyes with the sudden brightness. Mikey was dressed casually — jeans and a graphic tee referencing a game Chloe had never played — while Steph as hostess had thrown on her sleepover finest — a black wife-beater several sizes too big, rainbow knit socks, and maroon plaid pajama-pants so riddled with holes that they looked like the aftermath of an Al Capone drive-by.

The hat she had been wearing when they first played DnD together was nowhere to be seen. Chloe always wondered if the fire graphic was supposed to be some kind of joke about ‘flaming’. Corny, yes, but Steph seemed the type.

Chloe was relieved when Mikey shut the lights completely off again and they were left in cool, comfortable darkness — at least until she had to navigate the unfamiliar staircase. Mikey’s wiry legs treaded it with the closest he could come to graceful ease, but Chloe nearly tripped at the landing and felt Steph crash into her. The bone of her elbow smacked off something firm but soft, and she quickly tried to turn around to issue an apology, which only made her balance even more precarious.

“Shit! Did I hit your face?”

“No… let’s leave it at that.” Steph groaned. Chloe could hear her nursing fabric but could barely make her out between the dark top and her tanned skin.

Muffled by a few walls, Chloe heard Mikey yell from above, “I call the guest bed!”

As she resumed her blind ascent of their holy path, Steph, shadowing right behind her, added, “Looks like you’ll have to share with me.”

Chloe felt something strange at that revelation. Not the usual kind of strange. Something more like when Rachel asked her to bring the belt into her changing room.

_Is…? Am…? No…_

Fragments of thoughts and bigraphic words froze in her mind and sputtered around like unwelcome troubadours, forcing her to banish them all with a thrust of willpower.

_Carpet. Think about the carpet. It’s light blue. Or maybe it’s white, and the color is a trick of the moonlight. Think about the carpet… carpet…_

But the word ‘carpet’ just led Chloe back to equally libidinous byroads of her mind. 

She was endlessly grateful to feel the dull wood of Steph’s doorframe beneath her fingers, signaling some scene change to distract her. Having paused on the jamb, Steph practically pushed her forward and flipped a light switch.

“I’m gonna use your bathroom!” Mikey called from somewhere nearby.

“Don’t fuck it up!” Steph answered wryly. She took a look in a sticker-covered mirror within a battered pink frame and tousled her hair pensively before climbing onto her bed. She sat Indian-style, legs splayed across the thin orange comforter like a ribbon, and occupied herself with kneading a bit of embroidery.

Chloe took a moment to drink in all the bric-a-brac that covered Steph’s lair, like some DNA of her psyche laid out for genetic analysis. Chloe’s room at home almost seemed clean by comparison — posters straddled the walls at such a depth one could barely make out the crème of the original paint underneath, while shelves of books and trophies and statues made the rest of the room seem fit for an I-Spy photoshoot.

The pièce de résistance was a sleek wall of DVDs and games, though curiously no TV set to be seen. Chloe approached the pop-culture altar and began to run her finger over the casings, drinking in the trilling bumps of hundreds of hours of entertainment. Bending down, she studied the titles.

“You’ve got everything here! Deep Space Nine, Battlestar Galactica, Stargate Atlantis… which one is your favorite?”  
Chloe stepped back and made an exaggerated gesture around the vicinity of the rows.

“I have a soft spot for Lexx”

“I’ve never even heard of that…”  
Chloe meant it in earnest, but immediately realized she might have come off as condescending. 

“It’s basically an entire show of sci-fi softcore. Xev — the female lead — makes my knees wobbly, but I’m sure there’s some hunky guys you’d like in it too.”

Ah, so _that_ elephant was finally in the spotlight. Now that they were alone, Chloe realized she really needed to talk to Steph, but didn’t want to be that cliché girl who can’t meet a gay person without bringing up their sexual orientation.

“Hunky guys, huh? I’ll reserve judgment until I see for myself.”

“Hey, I’m always down for a watch party.”

Steph spread out across her bed and then turned over the covers so she could settle in. Taking that prompt, Chloe switched out the lights and started removing her hoodie.

“Slipping into something more comfortable?” Steph joked.

“Just pulling off my socks” Chloe answered as she reached down to do just that.

“Huh, I always sleep with socks on.” Steph replied.

“You’re weird.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know. Queer as hell.”

Chloe walked over and took one of the pillows off the bed, tossing it on the floor. She tried to lay out her hoodie as a makeshift bedspread and dropped herself down onto the hardwood, but found it incredibly uncomfortable. She could feel the zipper through several layers of fabric and knew her bony hips were going to start aching in a few minutes.

“Is hell known for being queer?” she asked.

“Hey, you’re the punk girl with all the 666 type shit. You tell me.”

So Steph knew her as ‘the punk girl’. Chloe supposed that was better than ‘loner freak girl’ as most of Blackwell seemed to think, but she was a bit stung that Steph hadn’t taken anything out of their shared love of sci-fi and games. The memory of Steph asking if Rachel was a ‘gamer’ turned within her chest.  
Chloe started to run her hand over the slats beneath Steph’s bed, looking aimlessly at the dark ceiling above — just about the only part of the room not covered in diluted Stephanium.

“Why are you down on the floor?” Steph inquired at length.

“I only have jeans, and it’s weird to wear jeans in bed,” Chloe answered. In truth she wasn’t really sure why she went for the floor, but her mind supplied a plausible explanation for the sake of Steph’s concern. With a lurch, she considered that Steph might think it was some kind of complex about her sexuality. With another, she considered Steph might be right.

“Just lay on top of the covers… or, come on, borrow one of my pajamas.”

Chloe heard Steph roll over as the slats creaked under the shifting mattress. The silhouette of an arm shot out above her and groped around until it found a drawer.

“In here,” Steph declared, her head and auburn hair hanging directly over Chloe.

Chloe shifted her body and investigated the contents of the dresser, pulling out some anonymous bottoms that, in the very least, weren’t filled with rips.  
She stood up in the center of the room, blushing slightly at the realization that she’d have to change right there.

_It’s pitch black. And come on, this is nothing!_

Tossing Steph’s loan over her shoulders, Chloe worked the button of her jeans and tried to pull them off as discretely as possible — not an easy task given how skinny they were. She ended up nearly hopping around the room as she tore them off her ankles and at last found herself standing there, no more than a yard from Steph, in her modest panties.

A sense of ease and relief crept back into her once she slipped into the new pants with a final left-right tug of the elastic, and she began to silently admonish herself for the brief anxiety and her brisk heart-rate. Damn her uncooperative and confused subconscious!

Yet, ultimately, climbing into bed beside Steph and bringing the sheets up to her chest, her heart remained frenetic. She wondered if Steph would notice.

“Okay, so…is hell queer.” Chloe let the proposition hang in the air for a beat before continuing: “I’m not sure.”

“I guess I hope it is. Rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, you know?”

“Yeah! You… I don’t know, it’s pretty… uhh…”  
If Chloe had a collar, she would be tugging on it right now. At least Steph couldn’t see the expression of ruddy embarrassment on her face at the moment.  
“…cool that you’re open about that whole thing.”

_‘That whole thing’. What a poet I am. Il miglior fabbro._

“Uhh, thanks.”

“Just, I mean, at a school full of Victoria Chases and Drew Norths, it takes a lot of balls to be so… true to yourself.”

As if in response to mentioning his sibling, Chloe at last heard a muffled “Goodnight!” from Mikey outside. Steph echoed the sentiment before turning over on her side to appraise Chloe, propping her head on her fist as if she were posing for a painting.

“It helps to not give a fuck. You seem like you have that down.”

“What age did you, uhh, realize? Or come… out of…?”  
Chloe sounded like Samantha Myers in Public Speaking class. She could barely spit a word out unless paired with an awkward pause.

Steph just snickered.

“Basically, I always knew it. I mean, I never got involved in any of that ‘boy’ stuff, except on the ‘boy’ side of it all – you know, like DMing fantasy roleplays. But it wasn’t until the end of middle school and the beginning of high school that I really understood myself enough to say it.”

So she’d had a few years on the dating market. Chloe always heard that Steph had been to second base, but mysteriously never who the other lovebirds were. She briefly wondered how many other girls — if any — had seen Steph’s bedroom. Had been in the position Chloe was in at the present moment.

“How about you?” Steph added.

“What, I…?”  
Chloe was quaking. What telltale heart whispered such a truth to Steph? How could Steph know her better than she knew herself? Steph did have a sort of worldly intrigue about her, but there’s no way she could just—

“I mean, how have you been getting along with the boys? You told us you don’t hang out with people much, but I remember there was that other girl from Arcadia Elementary I always saw you with. Haven’t seen her in a while.”

“Oh, she moved away.”  
_That_ Chloe could say without stuttering or searching around the bottom of an imaginary wineglass for words. Max’s absence was burned right into her larynx, as it was likewise tattooed on every other limb and organ.  
If Max were still here, she wouldn’t be in this bizarre circumstance at all. Wait, did Steph have a crush on Max or something back then? They had never spoken to each other, so it was strange Steph would even pay attention to Chloe’s habits.  
“And boys… shit. Yeah, I’ve been through a few, uhh, flings. You know Eliot?”

Steph ignored the question.  
“Are you a virgin?”

Chloe looked over at her. Even in the room’s near-total darkness, cast off only by a halo of streetlamp halogen, she could see Steph’s hazel eyes beaming at her, her painted lips ever so slightly ajar in mischievous suspense.

“No,” she answered flatly. “I’ve been all the way.”

Steph cast down the arm her head had been resting on and laid back out again, running thin fingers through her hair once more. Chloe pondered her response… could she be detecting _disappointment_ in that fugue of apathy?

“Wow, Chloe Price the punk heart-throb. If the world were fair, you’d be the coolest girl in Blackwell. I’d bet my entire movie collection Victoria Chase hasn’t had her cherry popped.”

“I’m definitely not taking odds on that. My Blade Runner copy would be right back in your hands.”

“Oh yeah, how is that treating you? Had you seen it already?”  
If it was indeed disappointment Steph expressed before, she was masking it now, and had turned back once again to face Chloe. Involuntarily the sheets seemed to have migrated downward, and Chloe could trace the outlines of Steph’s sleeveless top with her eyes. The fit was so poor one of the shoulder straps had virtually reached her forearm, and if Steph weren’t so flat-chested Chloe would surely be looking at cleavage.

“Only a million times. I love the Vangelis soundtrack, the cyberpunk atmosphere, that crazy fuckin’ ending with Roy and the wolf howls… it’s like my favorite movie.”

“See, that’s because you have not-shit taste. And if you come to more of our sessions I can widen your horizons even more. Rutger Hauer actually has a role in Lexx!”

Chloe knew Steph was referring to all her movies and television shows, but the idea of ‘widening horizons’ once more sent a guilty flame through her trunk. 

Somehow suppressing the stutters that had afflicted the most anodyne of conversations earlier, she dropped in an addendum she was barely ready to admit to herself:  
“Well, you were saying that Lexx girl made you weak in the knees — for me it’s Pris.”

Steph’s eyebrows shot up in some cocktail of surprise and apprehension, and Chloe felt her rational mind float upward to the point where it might as well sail out the window and leave the rest of her behind.  
They’d been teetotalers to the tee, but staying up to four in the morning was a suitable surrogate for drunkenness. Did she actually just speak those words aloud, or was it in her head? Chloe instantly was reminded of the train ride when she lapsed _“Some Rachel we’re having”_. This was absolutely not her week for suavity.

“She is really cute… I didn’t know you swung that way.”

“I wasn’t really sure myself.”

“’Wasn’t’? When you said you weren’t a virgin, did you…”

“No, no,” Chloe blurted, “I’ve never actually done… it… done anything with a girl.”

“Are you interested in it?”

A general question. The sort of general Socratic inquiry one might find in the leaf of a novel, or the preface to a science textbook. There was nothing specific in it at all! The very antithesis of any semantic hallway Chloe’s mind might dash down and trip into a dangerous misunderstanding.  
But oh, once again, her humors were battling inside, and those of spirit were ousting those of reason. Somehow, Chloe saw a proposition in that inkblot of words Steph had just uttered.

“Yes.”

Unlike that flatlined ‘no’ when Steph had asked about her virginity, she barely breathed out the latest answer.  
But now, she noticed, Steph’s hand was already on her shoulder, the dull crescents of her unpainted fingernails grazing up and down the trim of Chloe’s tee-shirt in a sympathetic rhythm. Chloe couldn’t believe something so simple — so orthogonal to that deep, sweet tidal ache within her — could feel so pleasant.

She reached her opposite hand up and took hold of Steph’s, squeezing gently, gliding each finger across the other girl’s until they were locked together. There was an implacable intimacy to it… Steph’s fingers were thin, but warm and smooth, contrasting the calluses where they met her palm. Chloe could even feel the soft little hairs that downed her skin on the back, rubbing ever so gently, like a canoer trying to preserve a glassy Cascadian lake.

Chloe needed to break the silence now or she was going to cross the Rubicon.

“Being ‘out’ like you… I don’t know if I could ever do it. I’m a coward.”  
Indeed, she was too timid to even look Steph in the eyes while they held hands, darting her vision anywhere but the careful countenance before her.

“Lucky for us, I’m not.”

All Chloe felt was a swirl of air and a brief fragrance – the alloy of coconut shampoo and apricot lipstick – before Steph’s lips interlocked her own. The impatient Rubicon had come to cross _her_.

On instinct, Chloe pulled back. In a half trance of shock and desire, she stared at Steph. Despite the half-light, the other girl had never looked so clear before in Chloe’s life. The little strands of silky hair stuck to her cheek or straddled the marble arc of her neck; those vernal eyes calling out like Siren-songs; the sticky glint of Chloe’s chapstick smudged unevenly along her face — in their intoxicating entirety, not quite palatable but not quite resistible.

Chloe had always believed there was a certain incantation one should recite to open the great doors of queerness: _it felt wrong, but it felt right._ Truth be told, it didn’t even feel wrong.

She was back as quick as she left, but this time Steph grabbed hold of Chloe’s hair, not daring let her retreat again. Once more, she was incredulous at the rapturous delights in Steph sliding those elegant fingers up into her knotted locks and letting them fall back in straight walnut waves.

In the space of days she had gone from theorizing whether Steph had actually kissed girls before, to furiously Frenching her. _Madame Stephanie, violer d’amores, and Chloe but a doe-eyed student! Écrasez l’infâme, and let the hetero birthright die!_

Whatever Steph wanted to teach her, she wasted no time in the lesson. Chloe soon found herself pinned beneath her, all hundred-and-something pounds of skinny gay hipster brought to task. She allowed her wrists to be pushed back beside her head, twin Laocoöns strangled in dactylic decameter, and sunk a dull moan into the quiet room as Steph turned her attention to her jugular.

“Are you trying to wake up my parents…?” Steph whispered between sloppy kisses.

“Bite me” Chloe answered, suddenly rousing herself until the other girl was in her lap, technicolor kneesocks digging into Chloe’s tailbone.  
Taking the excuse to push her advantage, Steph grasped the cotton straddling Chloe’s navel and pulled gently upward, giving Chloe the veto in whether she lifted her arms. Chloe gladly complied, but her heartbeat reached a volatile crescendo as the fabric passed over her face and funneled her strawlike hair into a volcanic cascade. Brushing rebellious tendrils from her eye, she felt the moon on the shallow goosebumped parabola of her bare chest.  
Steph sunk her teeth into the ligament where her shoulder met her breast, and all at once Chloe remembered how to breathe again. Like some Banana Republic generalissimo inspecting a drill, Steph leaned back in furrowed perusal of the heaving ribcage before her. She began to trace circles on her shirt in mock jealousy of Chloe’s equally meager endowment. She was smaller than Chloe, but surely no less sensitive, to which Chloe quickly attested by reaching out for a curt pinch. 

Pushing her back again, Steph launched strafing runs of kisses in sinusoid circuits of her tingling skin, each more languid than the last until her tongue was glued to the tender flesh just above Chloe’s elastic. The muscles of her stomach recoiled in trembling surprise, and it struck Chloe that even the foreplay of this little liaison was more potent than the payoff of her previous exploits. Was it the particular talents of her Dungeon Master, or some endemic property of the union, something tangible in a Rachel or a…

Well screw _Max_. Whatever she was doing in Transcolumbiana, this was a time for Chloe and Steph, a special kind of adventure that bore witness only to itself. Textbooks probably called this ‘ _experimentation_ ’, but Chloe hated the white-lab-coat melodrama of the word. Steph, for her part, knew what she was doing, and what she wanted. Steph knew how to talk to a girl without a veil of tiptoed innuendo and half-baked hypotheses. Steph deserved bravery right now.

_Alea Iacta Est._

Chloe plunged her hand past the elastic of Steph’s pajamas and gently held a beachhead on her outer thigh. Steph’s leg was hot to the touch and waxpaper smooth, barring the crosshatched canyons of old razor scars. The pathos of such telegraphed insecurity made Chloe more protective than ever, even if the pain was clearly years past. She practically crushed Steph into herself, laying timid kisses along the ridge of her eyebrows, temples, ears, jaw; whispering a half-remembered homily like “I think you’re really sweet”.

Recounting her own prickly thigh, Chloe cursed herself for not having shaved more recently. A romantic encounter had been the last thing she was expecting out of a DnD date, and if given warning she would have tried to doll up. Steph seemed to have no complaints, however, exuding a sensibility that broached routineness. Yet with the revelations etched into the skin of Steph’s thigh, Chloe did have to concede a certain vulnerability within her. Steph was still young: sinewy, boyish in build, a draft of future curves to be carved from neotenous clay. Her polka-dotted knickers didn’t signal experience.

Steph leaned in towards Chloe’s face, and cyclones of anxious pleasure began to skirt the extremities of her skin; skittering dopamine seemed to pool within her fingertips.

Instead of further kisses, Steph softly questioned her —

“Okay, so you’re _definitely_ interested in girl stuff. Are you interested in dating a girl?”

From beneath the bubbly ecstasy, a sick lurch fixed itself in Chloe’s sternum.

“I don’t know…” Chloe fumbled.

Steph moved down the bed, bringing her knees up to her chin, allowing Chloe’s hand to slide back out of her pajamas. For a moment, she drummed her toes in waves like a pianist, causing the woolen rainbow bands to undulate. Only after this meditation did Steph answer:

“Someone else.”

The words fell in a semantic jackknife somewhere between question and verdict.

“I don’t know.”

“Rachel?”

“I don’t know. I’m sorry, I keep saying that, but I really – I mean, it’s weird to deal with all this. I was hoping you could help me figure it out.”  
Chloe inched down the bed again closer to Steph’s grave figure, hoping the olive branch would be accepted.

“And I was hoping you might help _me_.”  
Steph didn’t retreat further, but she made no motion toward openness quite yet.

Chloe forced an anemic laugh. “Me help you? Chloe the loner, Chloe the loser, Steph the badass who’s been kissing girls since eighth grade?”

Steph let down her legs and took Chloe’s hands again, rubbing her thumbs along Chloe’s palms.

“That was — spin-the-bottle type stuff. Last-night-of-summer-camp type stuff. Nothing, really. I know people think I’m this… experienced adult who’s got herself figured out before everyone else, but…”

“We can figure it out together,” Chloe supplied.

“I want my first time to be special,” Steph confessed, and quickly added, “You _are_ special, Chloe; really, really, special — God, I’ve admired you for years. But you’ve got someone already who needs you. I want your first time to be special too.”

The pathetic trembling Chloe had finally managed to banish just a few minutes before seemed to be returning, though from a wholly different avenue. When Steph had been asking her about Rachel and Max, it wasn’t about them at all.

“Steph…”

“I was stupid and cocky or I would have seen it before we got this far. Do you hate me?”

The façade of Steph melted away, and Chloe found herself looking at Stephanie Gingrich. Chloe had been more complicit than anyone in buying into the act. 

_Fucking hell, as if any of us — even Victoria Chase — float at the surface of our actions like that._

Chloe once again could only blow a bit of air out her nose in some pitiful imitation of a laugh.

“You’re awesome, Steph. I wasn’t lying when I said you’re sweet. I want to do whatever you want to do—”

Steph cut her off by wrapping her arms around Chloe’s shoulders and pressing their cheeks together in a hug.

“How about we just cuddle, okay?”

Chloe nodded, knowing Steph could feel the motion, and pondered whether she should put her shirt back on. It lay pooled between the wall and mattress, and would raise some rather bizarre questions if Steph’s parents found it that way in the morning. That, and the greedy pink splotches on Chloe’s clavicles, plunging to her neckline and below. And, of course, the lipstick phantoms undoubtedly plastered across her face. In hindsight, she should have suspected something crafty when Steph got in bed with her makeup on.

Chloe decided against it. Once Steph was back under the covers, Chloe lay down to spoon her and nuzzle her hair, now spread in rivulets over the geography of the pillows. She let her arm casually drape over the girl in front of her, and once again their hands melted together in a tight squeeze.

“I hope we have a lot more sleepovers in the future,” Chloe whispered. “Maybe we could even do DnD at my place, if my mom’s shitty boyfriend isn’t around.”

Steph didn’t answer, but Chloe somehow knew she was smiling. The warmth of her body counteracted the chill of Chloe’s bare back in the tallow moonlight.

Yes, the clocks were right — moonlight was general over Oregon. It fell in webs around the Blackwell clock-tower, bathed the empty cars in the lot out back. It crested the sentinel pines by the lighthouse. It drifted sparkling between Douglas firs, and sparkled the drifting tides of the Pacific coast. It fell upon the house where Joyce and David lay, the studio where Max tossed restlessly, the secret pleasures of two unlikely friends, and on all the loving and all the dead.


End file.
